About
The National Variety Trials (NVT) program was established in 2005 by Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and is solely managed and funded by GRDC on behalf of Australian grain growers. Since then, the NVT program has expanded to become the largest coordinated variety trial network in the world.
Our NVT program aims to assist Australian grain growers and their advisors in varietal decision making by providing information on commercially available grain varieties, including comparisons of:
- yield performance
- disease resistance
- grain quality.
To assist growers and advisors in varietal decision making about newly released varieties we strive to generate credible information that is:
- accurate
- consistent
- independent
- timely
- locally relevant.
This accelerates the adoption of new superior varieties and creates enduring profitability for the Australian grains industry.
We test varieties of the following crops:
- barley
- canola
- chickpea
- faba bean
- field pea
- lentil
- lupin
- oat
- sorghum
- wheat.
We test varieties of commercial relevance to Australian grain growers. We also test pre-commercial lines from plant breeding programs and seed companies, allowing credible comparisons of a line's performance to be provided to growers almost immediately after it becomes commercially available.
In addition to providing important information to assist in varietal selection, the NVT program supports and enables non-NVT grains research projects, further increasing the benefit the program returns to the Australian grains industry.